With the withdrawal of French forces from South Vietnam in 1955, the U.S. took an ever-widening role in defending the country against invasion by North Vietnam. By 1965, the U.S. had "Americanized" the war, relegating the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) to a supporting role. While the U.S. won many tactical victories, it had difficulty controlling the territory it fought for. As the war grew increasingly unpopular with the American public, the North Vietnamese launched two large-scale invasions in 1968 and 1972--both tactical defeats but strategic victories for the North that precipitated the U.S. policy of "Vietnamization," the drawdown of American forces that left the ARVN to fight alone. This book examines the maturation of the ARVN, and the major battles it fought from 1963 to its demise in 1975. Despite its flaws, the ARVN was a well-organized and disciplined force with an independent spirit and contributed enormously to the war effort. Had the U.S. "Vietnamized" the war earlier, it might have been won in 1967-1968.

War.

When South Vietnam was abandoned by its American allies and consequently defeated by the North Vietnamese in 1975, all its military records were lost to the enemy. This has led to a paucity of factually based analyses of the war by South Vietnamese authors. In a project lasting some ten years, and financed by his own hard-earned resources, Colonel Viet has researched, documented, and analyzed the Vietnam War from the perspective of South Vietnamese armor forces, elements in which he himself played an important role as leader, teacher, and innovator. His travels to interview hundreds of people with first-hand knowledge of these matters took him back and forth across the United States (and to Canada, France and Australia) and enabled him to piece together the story as recalled by virtually every senior South Vietnamese who was involved, along with many of lesser rank but important experience, and many Americans as well. The result is a unique and invaluable work, one recounting from the early days of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam its organization and development, its combat operations, and its interaction with American advisors and then later with deployed American units. Viet tells this story as an historian would, not glossing over the shortcomings and failures of his fellow Vietnamese soldiers (or of the Americans), but also providing definitive accounts of their successes, their innovations, their courage and determination, and the hardships experienced and survived in the course of a long, difficult, and ultimately unsuccessful struggle. In Colonel Viet's words: "In order to give the truth back to history, we did not hide anything, whether it be victory or defeat." Finally, in a very touching portion of the work, Colonel Viet memorializes his fallen comrades of the armored force and commemorates the service of all the American advisors to the armored force he was able to identify.

In the spring of 1972, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in what became known as the Easter Offensive. Almost all of the American forces had already withdrawn from Vietnam except for a small group of American advisers to the South Vietnamese armed forces. The 23rd ARVN Infantry Division and its American advisers were sent to defend the provincial capital of Kontum in the Central Highlands. They were surrounded and attacked by three enemy divisions with heavy artillery and tanks but, with the help of air power, managed to successfully defend Kontum and prevent South Vietnam from being cut in half and defeated. Although much has been written about the Vietnam War, little of it addresses either the Easter Offensive or the Battle of Kontum. In Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam, Thomas P. McKenna fills this gap, offering the only in-depth account available of this violent engagement. McKenna, a U.S. infantry lieutenant colonel assigned as a military adviser to the 23rd Division, participated in the battle of Kontum and combines his personal experiences with years of interviews and research from primary sources to describe the events leading up to the invasion and the battle itself. Kontum sheds new light on the actions of U.S. advisers in combat during the Vietnam War. McKenna's book is not only an essential historical resource for America's most controversial war but a personal story of valor and survival.

"Three days before Easter last spring, the North Vietnamese struck South Vietnam with a fury unknown to the Vietnam war since the Tet offensive four years earlier. They poured south across the DMZ, smashed into the central highland from Laos, crossed the border from Cambodia and, with an army of 36,000 men and 100 Russian-made tanks, raced toward Saigon, boasting that they'd be in the city by May 19, Ho Chi Minh's birthday. From one end of the country to the other, bases and villages fell before the savagery of their onslaught. By April 5, all that blocked them from Saigon was a ragtag band of 6,800 South Vietnamese regulars and militiamen and a handful of American advisors holed up in An Loc, a once-prosperous rubber-plantation town of 15,000 astride Highway 13, which led to the capital, 60 miles to the south ... In Thi's opinion, reporting the victory of An Loc would contradict the U.S. media's basic premise that the war could not be won because ARVN was a corrupt and ineffective force. Subsequent published studies of the conflict provide a wealth of details about the use of U.S. airpower and the role of the U.S. advisors, but they fail to provide equal coverage to the activities and performance of ARVN units participating in the siege. Thi believes that it is time to set the record straight. Without denying the tremendous contribution of the U.S. advisors and pilots to the success of An Loc, this book is written primarily to tell the South Vietnamese side of the story and, more importantly, to render justice to the South Vietnamese soldier who withstood ninety-four days of horror and prevailed"--Publisher's website.

Published on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam, this book brings to life the experiences and memories of South Vietnamese soldiers-the forgotten combatants of this controversial conflict. South Vietnam lost more than a quarter of a million soldiers in the Vietnam War, yet the histories of these men-and women-are largely absent from the vast historiography of the conflict. By focusing on oral histories related by 40 veterans from the former Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces, this book breaks new ground, shedding light on an essentially unexplored aspect of the war and giving voice to those who have been voiceless. The experiences of these former soldiers are examined through detailed firsthand accounts that feature two generations and all branches of the service, including the Women's Armed Forces Corps. Readers will gain insight into the soldiers' early lives, their military service, combat experiences, and friendships forged in wartime. They will also see how life became worse for most in the aftermath of the war as they experienced internment in communist prison camps, discrimination against their families on political grounds, and the dangers inherent in escaping Vietnam, whether by sea or land. Finally, readers will learn how veterans who saw no choice but to leave their homeland succeeded in rebuilding their lives in new countries and cultures.

For Victor Hugo, the nineteenth century could be remembered by only its first two years, which established peace in Europe and France's supremacy on the continent. For General Lam Quang Thi, the twentieth century had only twenty-five years: from 1950 to 1975, during which the Republic of Vietnam and its Army grew up and collapsed with the fall of Saigon. This is the story of those twenty-five years. General Thi fought in the Indochina War as a battery commander on the side of the French. When Viet Minh aggression began after the Geneva Accords, he served in the nascent Vietnamese National Army, and his career covers this army's entire lifespan. He was deputy commander of the 7th Infantry Division, and in 1965 he assumed command of the 9th Infantry Division. In 1966, at the age of thirty-three, he became one of the youngest generals in the Vietnamese Army. He participated in the Tet Offensive before being removed from the front lines for political reasons. When North Vietnam launched the 1972 Great Offensive, he was brought back to the field and eventually promoted to commander of an Army Corps Task Force along the Demilitarized Zone. With the fall of Saigon, he left Vietnam and emigrated to the United States. Like his tactics during battle, General Thi pulls no punches in his denunciation of the various regimes of the Republic, and complacency and arrogance toward Vietnam in the policies of both France and the United States. Without lapsing into bitterness, this is finally a tribute to the soldiers who fell on behalf of a good cause.

The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America’s worst foreign policy disaster of the 20th Century. Yet a complete understanding of the endgame—from the 27 January 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords to South Vietnam’s surrender on 30 April 1975—has eluded us. Black April addresses that deficit. A culmination of exhaustive research in three distinct areas: primary source documents from American archives, North Vietnamese publications containing primary and secondary source material, and dozens of articles and numerous interviews with key South Vietnamese participants, this book represents one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever accomplished, including almost one hundred rarely or never seen before North Vietnamese unit histories, battle studies, and memoirs. Most important, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of South Vietnam’s conquest, the leaders in Hanoi released several compendiums of formerly highly classified cables and memorandum between the Politburo and its military commanders in the south. This treasure trove of primary source materials provides the most complete insight into North Vietnamese decision-making ever complied. While South Vietnamese deliberations remain less clear, enough material exists to provide a decent overview. Ultimately, whatever errors occurred on the American and South Vietnamese side, the simple fact remains that the country was conquered by a North Vietnamese military invasion despite written pledges by Hanoi’s leadership against such action. Hanoi’s momentous choice to destroy the Paris Peace Accords and militarily end the war sent a generation of South Vietnamese into exile, and exacerbated a societal trauma in America over our long Vietnam involvement that reverberates to this day. How that transpired deserves deeper scrutiny.

Drawing upon both archival research and his own military experiences in Vietnam, Willbanks focuses on military operations from 1969 through 1975. He begins by analyzing the events that led to a change in U.S. strategy in 1969 and the subsequent initiation of Vietnamization. He then critiques the implementation of that policy and the combat performance of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN), which finally collapsed in 1975.

What Americans call the Vietnam War actually began in December 1946 with a struggle between the communists and the French for possession of the country--but Vietnam's strategic position in southeast Asia inevitably led to the involvement of other countries. Written by an officer in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces, this poignant memoir seeks to clarify the nuances of South Vietnam's defeat. From the age of 12, Van Nguyen Duong watched as the conflict affected his home, family, village and friends. He discusses not only the day-to-day hardships of wartime but his postwar forced relocation and eventual imprisonment. A special focus is on the anguish caused by the illusive reality of Vietnamese independence. The political forces at work north and south, the hardships suffered by RVNAF soldiers after the 1975 U.S. withdrawal, and the effects of reunification on the Vietnamese people are discussed.